We Have Tripled Athletes’ Pay – Minister

The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, has revealed that his ministry has tripled its remuneration to athletes representing the country in various global tournaments including the olympics.
This is as he revealed that the ministry still owes 54 athletes a total of N44.37million in bonuses and remunerations.
Dare revealed these to State House Correspondents on Thursday at the weekly ministerial briefing organised by the presidential communications team at the presidential villa.
“For the first time in a long time, we have decided to triple the remunerations for our athletes. We tripled their bonuses too.
“We also moved away from just giving them naira to giving them dollars because when you check other countries and what they pay their athletes, they pay in dollars.
“The paralympians, who won 10 medals, less than eight weeks after they returned, we paid them a bonus of $15,000 for gold, $10,000 for silver and $7,500 for bronze.
“We still have a few outstanding we have a balance of $2,000 to pay to about 54 athletes. And that’s because I increased their allowances from $3,500 to $6,000 at the olympics. So, we had to rework our budgets and we are almost there. As we speak $4,000 has been paid to all of them. The $2,000 will be available soon.” Dare said.